This weeks pictures

Its been a long week, and its only Wednesday. My hubby has been working extra due to being shorthanded at work. Hopefully this weekend he won't have to work...he's supposed to be off. I'm thinking about trying to talk him into turning off his phone.

So, as you can see by those first 3 pictures, that our chicks have really grown. They are almost big enough to let in with the big chickens. We're going to put them together with the big chickens here in about a week. We just let the little leghorn chicks and the golden comets in with the bigger chicks yesterday. Everybody seemed to do great together.

Well, we will not be bringing Carmel home to live with us. I'm very grateful, that her owners have decided to keep her. She was so very attached to her people, and her pack. Huskies are indeed pack animals, who actually mourn the loss of pack members.  We are however, it would appear, going to be meeting with a different female, who is under a year old, and of a different breed. I'm not sure what her name is, but she's a Walker Hound, who is "high spirited" She's spayed, and up to date on all shots as well...I love when people use that term about a dog..I believe that means that she's still got a lot of puppy energy, and I'm wondering if I'm not going to need to get a harness to walk her. I believe that since she's been socialized with other dogs, that it should go well. Sam and Jasper have been socialized, but don't do well with other dogs who haven't been...so we will wait and see.

Oh..back to the pictures, I got a little off track there didn't I? So, I thought those clouds were just really neat looking. I loved how they looked like they had such a neat texture. And those worms, well, they come up in the same place, at the same time every day. In fact, they have permanent looking holes in the ground where they come up. Frank wants to try to catch them, but I'm thinking I'd rather let them stay there and keep doing all of the hard work they've been doing for us.

And of course, I'm so in love with that Ballerina doll I designed, I can't stop sharing her picture. That's the last share, promise!!! :D

Well, I had better get off of this computer for the morning. I have to get to the DMV to renew my car tags today. I've had all month to do it, and have yet to get it done. Plus I still need to gather the mornings eggs. I have the incubator fired up, and ready to go. We are going to be filling it with Leghorn eggs to see if we are going to get those Sex Link chicks we're after. We are hoping to get Red Star Chicks, so keep your fingers crossed on that.

Hope everybody has a great week!!!!

Crocheting

http://www.craftsy.com/pattern/crocheting/toy/ballerina-rag-doll-/94609

So as we know, I sometimes write patterns to sell...this is one of those. Now I'm not asking you guys to go out and buy my patterns, or anything like that, but it can't hurt to advertise a little bit. Dolls are my favorite things to design. This one here took me about a year to finish. It's not a complicated pattern at all...not one bit, but getting it perfected was.  I'm not going to lie, I'm madly in love with this doll.  She's 21 inches tall, and huggably soft. 

Please, feel free to share this pattern with your friends and or family!!!!

Thanks for reading my advertisement!!!!

ARBA

ARBA??? What's that?? I'm sure there are plenty of you out there who know, but for those of you who don't, its American Rabbit Breeders Association.  We got our cards, paperwork, and handbook in the mail yesterday. We joined up together under one membership, which is pretty cool that we got to do that. There are a great number of benefits involved. Once we start breeding, we plan on listing our bunnies on there as well.

Speaking of bunnies, Cadburry and Pinkerton are growing nicely. We do have them in their own separate cages now however. They don't seem to mind now, with all of that room they have to hop around, and act crazy. They are in stacking cages, that we had the dickens of a time putting together thanks to the fact that the wrong parts were in the box.  Pinkerton is in the bottom cage, and we get the biggest kick out of her. She shoves her head under the feeder and watches television. I do need to get some new pics of them to share with you guys. I plan on doing that here in the next day or two.

Our worm tubs are doing great thanks to the bunnies. These two little house bunnies have produced enough poop that my 3 remaining tubs of worms, have a nice thick layer of poop on the top of each tub. My worm poo will be super awesome by the middle of summer!!!

Making worm grit for your worm tubs

When you raise worms in captivity, there are a few things that they actually do need that they can get in the wild. They do need a bit of grit to help out their digestive system. Now I'm sure that in the wild, they aren't getting finely ground up egg shells, unless they are hanging out in somebodies garden or compost pile....and even then its highly doubtful that somebody is going to turn their egg shells into grit for the garden/compost pile.

Since we have chickens, we have eggs (obviously). I generally throw the shells in the compost bucket.  But when my egg shell grit is getting low, I will throw the shells into a bowl until I have a big enough batch to bake, and crush, and then run through the blender to turn into almost a fine sand.
You do need to bake them for your worms, because of the whole salmonella issue, and for some reason (that I'm not sure of) you do need to bake them to kill whatever germs there are, that are on the shells.

Basically you throw them in the oven at 250 for 20 min. When you get them out of the oven, they will practically explode in your hand. That's on of my favorite parts. So what I generally do is put them in a big bowl after I bake them, and then beat them down with a wooden spoon, and then I throw them in the blender until they look like bits of sand.

Other than helping them digest, it also helps to keep the alkaline down in the tubs if you give them coffee, and stuff along those lines.

Now, if you feel so inclined to keep a constant baking of the egg shells going, you can also give a sprinkle of this in your chicken feed to help make sure your chickens are getting plenty of calcium. So, this is multi use, which is awesome....and if you like the texture of it, you could also keep up with it, and sprinkle it directly on your garden to help with the dirt. Over time if you have a clay garden, this will help to bring your soil around. And yes, I do plan on using this as an additive, on a regular basis, to my garden. We have a nice sized garden, in a great spot. The only problem is, the dirt isn't the best. But now that we have the bunnies, and a good size compost pile, our garden should really start getting awesome here in the next few years.

Alright, enough of that...let me talk about my last post a bit. Carmel did come to visit us, and she is indeed a most beautiful pup. Her current owners are great people, and were off on her age by a couple of years, but that's ok. They are going to come again for another visit, but I honestly fear that it may not work out. I'm not so certain that Carmel likes us. As we know, that's a most important thing when you are bringing a pup home to the family circle. I want it to work out so badly, but I cannot push something onto this sweet beautiful dog, who is past middle age. If things don't work out with us, I certainly hope that her family reconsiders rehoming her, and keeps her with them. She truly is set in her ways at this point in her life, and I believe that she is very happy with her family. She is a very intelligent dog. I've decided that if things do not work out with her, that perhaps we should just be happy with just Sam and Jasper, and be a happy home with just the two of them. They seem quite content with the way things are. I think they could be happy with another sweet girl, but that sweet girl would have to love them back as well.

Alright, that's it for the rest of this day, I think its time for me to settle in for the evening with a bit of crochet. I'm toying around with the idea of a new crochet pattern. Something bright and springy...keep your eyes peeled!!! If you have any ideas for a pattern that you might like for me to write, don't hesitate to let me know!!!! I'm up for any challenge!!!!

a little personal

As you all know, I don't normally get too personal on here, I usually keep it about the happenings of things around here.  Right now, my hopes are pretty high.

As some of you all may or may not know, last summer our Oldest Husky Nikki crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. Its left a huge gaping hole in our lives. Everybody who knew her, couldn't help but to love her. Her presence is missed even now so many months later. We've been thinking and talking about and searching for a new girl to come and help with the healing. We even went to the animal shelter, with a leash, in hopes of bringing home a new girl. We came home empty handed, and down trodden.  We've answered many adds on Craigslist, only to find out that some wanted a huge re homing fee that was just incredible. Sometimes the dog had already been rehomed, and sometimes they owner changed their mind at the last minute.  Well, yesterday Frank found an add on there he wanted me to look at. So I sit down with my cup of coffee, and I take a look...and I look, and I look, and then emotions overtook me. I cried. This 3 year old vision of beauty just stole my heart right then and there. Her name is Carmel, and she needs a good home with people who have lots of time for her. Once I was able to stop crying and get control of myself, I answered, hoping for a great answer.
Well to make a long story short, she is coming here tomorrow, to meet everybody, and hopefully to stay with us forever. Somehow I think the timing must have finally been right for us to bring home somebody new to love. Just her beautiful face, was a balm on my aching heart.

Ok...sorry, I'm all done with the emotions for now. I will hopefully be able to share lots and lots of pictures with all of you tomorrow. I'm currently taking a morning coffee break. I got up early to work on rearranging things. She will be coming with a crate, because that's what she's used to sleeping in. Not because she has to, but because some dogs just do that. So, since she's going to be adjusting, I'm not going to take that away from her. If she needs it for the rest of her life, then so be it.

Right now, I want to take a moment to thank all of my readers for following along and reading this blog. I know that sometimes its probably a little corny, and a little different. It's a fun blog I hope, and in it I share my learning experiences, and many different things...and learning I have done a lot of.
I hope to continue to bring you all different recipes, pictures of animals, and things that are happening on our ever growing 3 acre farm. Some people think we are indeed a little crazy, and I love the looks on family members faces when we tell them what we are doing next. But in the end, we're happy, and we have each other. (Even if sometimes one of us thinks the other is nuts, we chug on along anyways)

So from the bottom of my heart, to all of you, Thank you for sticking with me, thank you for reading, and have a fantastic week, all of you.

Our Growing Farm

As you can see by the pictures, our little farm is growing!!! We went to pick up our THREE Black Silver Fox Rabbits yesterday from a really awesome farm, about 45 minutes from here. Let me start by saying, this farm has goats and rabbits (and dogs, which is most important on a farm I believe), it was really awesome, and made me believe that our little farm, is probably awesome too. We just have chickens and rabbits and dogs.  Well Donna, the lady who owned the farm, took us around to see her other rabbits, and her set up, after we had our 3 loaded up. She has some of the most beautiful rabbits, she has blacks, blues, and chocolates. I held a really beautiful Blue bunny, but when she put that Chocolate girl in my arms, I was in love...and was not to be parted from that bunny. Her name is Betty. I cannot wait until she is old enough to Breed, because I think she's going to make some fantastic babies. Once everybody gets settled in better, and used to the dogs running around barking at them...and when the dogs get used to them, and stop running around barking at them, I'm going to work on getting more, and better pictures of them. The silvering in them is just fantastic. I'm not sure if you can tell by my gushing, but I'm absolutely in love with these rabbits.

Now, onto those cake pictures I have posted, that have nothing to do with bunnies...and more to do with what looks like owls...we went to a birthday party for a 1 year old yesterday. It was a great celebration. They had an owl theme, which was Look Whoo is turning 1. Let me start by saying that this baby is truly a blessing to her family. My friend that had this baby, went through a lot to be able to get pregnant, and struggled for many years. She got pregnant with twin boys, and tragically miscarried them. They were beautiful little boys. Within a few months, she managed to get pregnant, without even trying with this little girl, and successfully made it through this pregnancy, and this baby is a beautiful Joy to everybody who meets her. We were truly blessed to be able to be part of this celebration.

With that, I will close this up for the day, I hope everybody has a very Happy and blessed Easter, and many more Easters to come, from our Family to yours.

Corn in the worm tubs

Worms love corn!!! They especially love it when the corn is still whole, and still on the cob. As you can see they will swarm to it. I think part of it is the sweetness of the corn, and the other part is that they love to lay their cocoons in the cob, which makes it even neater, because the babies will hatch into the cob, and will stay there for quite a while, eating the corn cob from the inside out.

Sometimes when we buy dried corn on the cob which we hang in the chicken run to amuse the chickens, we will take the dry cob and toss it into the worm tub. I wish I would have gotten pictures of it, but one day when I was going through the tubs, I broke one of those in half to see how it was going, and it pretty much so crumbled in half, and was just absolutely filled with worms. It was awesome!!!

I would estimate that most of this corn will be gone in about a good month. 

Now as you can see in the bottom picture, there is a used coffee filter, with some grounds, and some dog fur. The worms absolutely love the fur as well. When I read that at first I was kind of skeptical, until I tried it. I opened up the tub after I put it in a day or two later, and it was filled with worms. You just have to make sure it stays lightly damp so that the worms don't dry out.

The neat part about the worms, and the rabbits is, not only can I dump their litter right into the tubs, BUT after they are done with their nesting box when the babies are ready to be weaned, I can put parts of the nest into the worm tubs. The fur can go into the tub, and if I'm doing a more open tub, I can put the hay/straw into the tubs. IF I put the hay/straw into the tubs, I would have to make sure to mix it in well, so that it doesn't get too hot, and melt the worms. Yes, that can indeed happen. Chances are that part of it will just go onto the compost pile.

Tomorrow we will be picking up our Black Silver Fox Rabbits. I'm fairly excited about them. That will take our little farm to the next step. Cadburry and Pinkerton are going to be part of the farming, but they will be more for pets than for anything else. In other words, they won't get ate.

This is going to be a very busy weekend, we get the bunnies tomorrow, then I have a birthday party to go to later on that day, and then Sunday is Easter, so lots of family stuff going on there. My poor DH won't have much of a weekend off.

Well, That's it for now!!! Happy Easter Everybody!!!!